My journal for Week 2 will highlight the difference between “Seeing” and “Perceiving”. I will further explain the meaning of Nostalgia by illustrating Visual Images of Postcards and what is represented through the postcards . I would also like to investigate about Perception and reasons as to why women perceive “Slim as beautiful”. It would be interesting as well to find out who created the ideology and to what extent would a women go through in order to get a body labelled as “Slim”. I will then extend my research to slimming pills and consumerism as how women consumers believe and perceive products such as slimming pills despite the dangers that they have cost with other consumers. The reason why I want to investigate on such an issue is because as a young girl, I have always been overweight and my mother has always sent me to go for aerobics and diet just for the sake of keeping fit. However, it was not till my late teens that I started to take a Chinese laxative which was also in the form of slimming pills and I started to encounter tremendous pain in my tummy. Hence, I stopped taking the pills altogether and I told myself, “Who cares if I’m fat, as long as I am healthy.”
“Seeing comes before words.The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.” ( Berger, 1972). Through this statement alone we can infer that seeing is the first thing that every human beings do as a child before they start perceiving something or before they are even able to think. As a child we always see things and observe things at the same time take it as ‘face value’ i.e what we see is what we get. We don’t analyse what we see as a young child because we do not understand the difference between what is right and what is wrong and we do not have any cultural or historical background where we can base our perception yet. We always rely on our “significant other” to know whether our behaviour is acceptable or not in the society. According to Charles Cooley, 1979, we see others as our “Self Looking Glass” where we respond to how other people perceive us in our behaviour. (pg.63 )
As we grow up in the society and become part of social institutions, we are taught to comply according to social norms and values. Our behaviour reflects what we perceive to be the norms in the society. In some cases, children behave according to how they perceive their surroundings for example, if the community they grew up in treats him good then he will turn out to be good, however if he is being mistreated, there is a tendancy that he will treat others the same way. The way we perceive the outside world is according to what we know or what we believe, which are part of cultural and historical factors. To be able to perceive, we must also be able to understand language .
Perception involves all our experience about the world and how we perceive it is through our sensory organs such as sense, touch, smell, hearing and sight. This is how we make “connections and communicate to the outside world”. (Jamieson,n.d)
The media itself plays a major role in shaping the thoughts and perception of gender and its influence crosses the border between primary and secondary socialisation. For example, when we look at cartoons, we can see all the Princesses eg. Cinderella being portrayed as pretty and beautiful, and most obvious of all, her shape is like an hour glass. Whereas, princess Fiona in Shrek, who is still under the curse of the witch is fat and she is labelled as ‘ugly’ because of her size. Here, we can see that perception of women being slim and beautiful has already been embedded in gender ever since at a young age.
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| Fig.1 Cinderella portrayed as beautiful because of her slim figure |
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| Fig.2 Princess Fiona portrayed as ugly because she is fat. |
According to the "hypodermic needle theory" ,mass media had a “direct, immediate and powerful effect“on its audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behavior change.(http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/ , n.d) The theory also claims that It is the nature of human beings to be passive in receiving informations and that humans are like sponges and we absorb every information which is fed to us. Have we ever thought for a while and say to ourselves , “Hmm...could this be the truth that i am hearing or seeing?.” Most probably, we will say this to ourselves only if we have a background knowledge of the informer, i.e. perhaps the informer is not a reliable source or he is well known for his lies. Apart from that, we will accept and believe all that we hear and see without even investigating the slightest bit of truth. We can say that it is part of our unconscious mind that is receiving passive informations.
This is proven in many advertisements. Most consumers believe what they see in advertisements and the moment the latest advertisement comes out on TV or Magazine, they will rush to the shops to grab the latest product in the market. Among many other products , Slimming pills is a top selling product in the market among women worldwide which can cause side effects to the health and yet people still purchase the product without second thoughts. We hardly hear about consumers consulting doctors before purchasing these products. This shows that consumers believe every single word and advice that is written on the product. To relate this issue to my earlier argument, i will now examine the truth behind slimming products and use a case study to show that Slimming pills has caused people’s health to deteroriate and to some extent it has caused death.
Before that here are some rhetoric advertisements of slimming which enhance the ideology that women should “look slim” in order to “feel sexy”. If we focus on the text it emphasises that it is all “women’s dream to look slim”. Here are examples of images of how being slim is portrayed through the Media.
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| Fig.3 Ideology of what a women’s dream is. |
Back in the year 2002, Andrea De Cruz, an actress from Singapore was admitted to the Hospital because she suddenly became unconscious. After a thorough check the doctors confirmed that she had a liver infection and this was due to the slimming pills called Slim10 that she has taken few months back. Her boyfriend also an actor was willing to donate part of his liver to her and this saved her life. Ever since this happened there was a lot of controversy about Slimming Products and Slimming Products started to be banned in the country. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article)
However, despite this case that has been a major controversy especially in China where the product was manufactured, this did not change the perception of Asian women towards slimming products. They do not not even fear the least of the danger that slimming pills is likely to cause. Instead, they fall for the advertisement of Slimming products and are ready to try out new slimming products available in the market.
The ideology of “slim” women being sexy is created by human beings. When advertisements portray sexy models on the media, women have the perception that being slim is associated with being beautiful, pretty and suitable for becoming a model. This ideology has become a global culture where majority of the society accepts this as the norms. Even the opposite sex perceive slim women to be beautiful.
Let us examine this photograph used to advertise slimming products.
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| Fig.4 This picture shows a before an after effect of eating a particular slimming pill product |
When we look at the picture above Fig.4 it gives the consumers the perception that anyone who takes the slimming pills will definitely loose weight and will transform into the slim lady represented in the left picture. For Andrea Cruz’s case, she is not overweight, however, she possesses this aneroxic mindset that she has to lose weight so she decided to purchase the slimming pills offered to her by her colleage. However, it turned out to be the worst nightmare she could ever imagine. And now, her doctors told her that she can only live until 50 years old after all the transplant has been successful. Slim 10 contains an ingredient called “Fenfluramine” which contains ingredients that can cause damage to the liver. In the same year, another fellow Singaporean, Selvarani Raja who took the same slimming pills Slim10 died due to liver failure after consuming the same product for a few months. ( http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article)
CONCLUSION
Nevertheless, perception is after all how a person is made to see things and after analysing how a person creates his own perception, it is clear that perception comes from ideologies as well as their perception relies on their own cultural background as well as their social background. Both factors effects a perception of an individual because it gives them the ideology of what something is suppose to be or look like. For example, Once a woman has her own perception of what “slim” is in her culture, there is nothing to stop her to believe otherwise. Women will indeed do anything to get a body of a supermodel even if it will cost their life. And this is proven in the slimming pills advertisement where the advertisement creates a sense of awareness among the women that it will help them to loose weight, hence the women starts purchasing the slimming pills with the hope of becoming slim just like the woman that they perceive in the posters despite all its negative effects. The negative effects are just ignored by the consumers. People easily believe anything that is represented to them by the media. As I stated earlier, media is the most important social institution that helps to shape an individual’s perception towards things. Thus I conclude it is not possible to judge one’s perception or whether an individual’s perception is right or wrong however, it is important to know that an individual’s cultural background and social background helps to shape an individual’s perception as well.
NOSTALGIA
Nostalgia is understood to be the happy moments and bitter sweet memories of the past. Nostalgia is a “cultural artifact” which is said to be all the good things that has been extracted in the past which is represented to an individual. Almost everybody has experience good memories which they consider to be nostalgic moments. In this visual journal, I will demonstrate how nostalgic moments play an important part in an individual’s life and how advertising companies use nostalgia to create a good impression of their product in order to make the viewers perceive what they see to be true.
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| Postcards of Visit Malaysia from Malaysian Tourism Board presenting good images of Malaysia |
Here, we can see that the post cards distributed by the Tourism of Malaysia shows a reflection of how beautiful Malaysia is. Anybody who have never been to Malaysia will think that Malaysia is the perfect paradise and will be longing to go there. In one of the postcards, it shows the slogan “Fall in love again and again.” This slogan tries to manipulate the mind of the people who has seen the post card. Again it depends on individual’s interpretation but for me it is saying as if , if we visit Malaysia, we will fall in love again and again with the country and everything there. It also builds a perception for the individual that Malaysia is a lovely place to visit.
However, we are not aware that there are many omitted informations about Malaysia in the postcards. For example, we all know that Malaysia is well known for the overpriced taxi, as well as the dangers in Chow Kit Road. But if an individual who sees the postcard has never experience this incident, their perception of Malaysia will be totally different from a person who has bad experience in Malaysia. The person who has only seen Malaysia portrayed through the postcard will perceive Malaysia as a wonderful place to visit and will be longing to go there for a holiday. However, the person who has bad experience might not want to go to Malaysia again. Here, it is evidential that a person is only able to perceive if the individual has got an experience to relate it to. Cultural and historical factors also play a huge influence towards the ability of an individual to perceive.
REFERENCES:
Jamieson,H. (2007). The perceptual connection. Visual communication : More than meets the eye (pp.13-27). Bristol : Intellect Books.
Retrieve on 2nd September 2010 from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article)
Petterson,R. (2002). Information design : An introduction (pp.223-234). Retrieved 30th August 2010, from Universii Brunei Darussalam Ebrary Books Website.
Sturken, M. And Cartwright L.(2009). Practices of Looking : Image, power and politics.Practices of Looking: an introduction to visual culture (pp.10-44). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition.
Barnard,A. , Burgess,T and Kirby,M (2004).Sociology. (pp.38-45).Cambridge University Press,2nd Edition.
Davis, D.K. & Baron, S.J. (1981). A History of Our Understanding of Mass Communication. In: Davis, D.K. & Baron, S.J. (Eds.). Mass Communication and Everyday Life: A Perspective on Theory and Effects (pp.19-52). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing.
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